


A Conversation on Sentiment

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:07:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2716616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes has a conversation with someone on New Year's Eve about the death of Irene Adler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation on Sentiment

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally write in 1st person. This is an experiment. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Written for the "Destroy" prompt in the Sherlock Rarepair Bingo.

The Woman is dead.

The Woman, and I say 'the Woman' as opposed to calling her by the name that everyone else calls her because she isn't that name. Not to me.

She died on 25 December, Christmas Day. At least that's when they found her. That's the day they splayed her out in Bart's morgue. She died as she lived---violently. Viciously. Cruelly. If you look at a corpse, really look at it, you can actually see how it died, see every swing and every punch and know how it happened.

You can rebuild the death in your mind. Very few people do it, because I don't think a lot of them _like_ it.

Quite the Christmas gift.

The human body can only take a certain amount of beating before it begins to harden. I did several experiments on muscular hardening in my early twenties on the exterior muscles of my calves and found that over the course of six months, the same number of punches that would reduce me to a wheelchair would leave me with mere bruises. Of course, it had to be applied slowly, over time. The Woman was hard. Sinewy and lithe, and her slap bit. But this time it was _too hard_. Too fast.

And she knew it was coming.

This is what I am not understanding. This is what I need to talk to you about.

She knew. She knew someone was coming to get her. The cameraphone, her ticket to salvation. No one would touch her so long as she had it, and she gave it to me. She gave it to me and she _told me_. She told me so that I would know.

Was she leaving me a note?

Is that what this is?

Is it a note?

Or is it that no one else would notice the Woman's death, and she would want me to investigate? She must have known that the body would be void of all traceable evidence, scrubbed clean of anything usable, that she would be a completely untraceable and unidentifiable victim and her perpetrator would be out there forever. Perhaps she wanted vengeance?

No. No, that's not her style. Vengeance is petty, it's small-time. It's---

I don't even know why I'm talking to you.

Mycroft told me I barely knew her. We met once, she sent 64 text messages, 57 of which John saw occur, even if he didn't read them, and…that was it. Should have been it.

Before her death, she bested me.

I'm not often bested.

Perhaps that's what this is really about, though, isn't it? The Woman as the one who bested Sherlock Holmes. Her cleverness, overall. And she was. She was moderately clever, and I don't call a great deal of people moderately clever. Even John only settles somewhere into the "occasionally clever" box, and that's only when I'm feeling particularly kind. But the Woman. The Woman was clever. In her death, I might even admit she was very clever.

The world feels different now.

Is that what's supposed to happen?

I have experienced personal death before, but I imagine it's Not Good to compare the death of one's beloved pet dog to the Woman. After all, Redbeard was loyal and caring and overall the greatest creature I ever met. His loss should be revered and separated from every other loss in the world. The Woman stabbed me with a needle that knocked me out for over 18 hours. It's impossible to compare.

And yet, there's an ache. It's almost physical. I am, of course, completely aware that it is not. Sentiment, that loathsome chemical defect that I have sought to purge my whole system of, causes this ache. I _know_ this. I can point it out to myself, I can say it again and again and I can bring it up, and still I ache.

I haven't eaten in four days. It's going to affect me soon.

I need to fix this. Fix this problem that her loss---no, no, it's not a loss. It's not a loss, because I haven't lost anything. I know precisely _where_ she is. The concept of relating loss to death is moronic and too frequently associated by sentimental people looking for ways to solidify and explain the "feelings" that are keeping them down.

I don't need that.

I need to work.

I can't work because I can't _think_.

One person shouldn't mean this much. Now John---the death of John would make sense. I would be devastated. His friendship matters, he has become engrained in my life, and no longer having his blog posts to read would suddenly mean I have nothing to laugh at when I'm terribly bored on the weekends.

But, _her?_ The Woman means nothing. She _meant_ nothing. A blip on the radar. A ficker of motion. Something intriguing and different, yes, but nothing worth all this---all of---

It's like the world is destroyed.

Don't laugh. I honestly won't continue if you laugh.

It's like the world is destroyed.

Something vital and important to its function is missing. Taken away, ripped out, pulled apart. _Missing_. And so the world is destroyed. And so I'm here. Holding the world together.

And I can't think.

And I can't eat.

Because she's gone from the world. As juvenile and idiotic as that sounds.

Tell me you understand. Tell me this makes some modicum of sense to you, because I am at a loss. Human emotion of this level is beyond me, and even I can admit that. It is important to understand one's own faults, few as they may be in my case.

I can't understand why the Woman's death hurts.

I tried to put the code---the counter from John's blog into the phone, and it didn't work, and it was like I had lost her all over again, I was so _hopeful_. There were things, there were little things that I thought about with that reconstruction of her beating, and I thought _maybe_ , just maybe there were things wrong. That it couldn't have been her, that I'd been mistaken somehow, that it had all be a ruse, a sham, a game she was playing. I have never been that disgustingly hopeful, not ever.

I wanted her to secretly be alive. Somehow. I'd have done anything.

Tell me what I've done wrong. Tell me how to fix this sentiment.


End file.
